Shigesato Itoi recently shared some memories of his time working on Mother, which it seems he remembers quite fondly. You can check out some summarized info from Itoi's comments below.

Itoi thinks the MOTHER game was the first time in his life that he went into a job with the feeling of, “Please let me do this!” All other work he had done before was of the “Please do this for us, Mr. Itoi” variety, but the MOTHER games were the first where HE wanted to do something – to the point that even if he had been turned down he would’ve figured out a way to make it happen somehow.